Economic activity may rise to mop up energy saved by innovation, says S.Ananthanarayanan.

The blame for many modern day ills is pinned on the petrol-driven automobile. And the effort the world over is to replace the IC engine with electric motors. Would the solution create problems no better than the ones it solves?

The IC engine was a Godsend, for it replaced the horse. And in doing so, it not only overcame the limitations of horse-drawn transport, but also relieved towns and cities of a growing menace of horse dung. A menace that would have become unsurmountable, a result of the prosperity that steam power had created.

London, in the late 1800s, had over 11,000 carriages, public transport vehicles, carts, wagons, buggies – all drawn by horses. The average draft horse produces 10 kg of dung every day. This worked out, every month, to thousands of tonnes, which could not be cleared – and if it were, would soon fill the dumping place. “London was carpeted with a warm, brown matting”, said a commentator, and the Times of 1894 saw the prospect of London being “buried under nine feet of manure.”

The reason this did not happen is that the IC engine took the place of the horse, in cities and in the countryside. The motor car needed no loads of hay, and it produced no dung. And then, the IC engine permitted greater speeds and could haul heavier loads. The result was the leap in economic activity, and the still greater role for transport. Where the rise in horse-drawn traffic was caused by rising economic activity, it was the IC engine that set off the spiral that dominated the 20th century.

The result, as we know, is the CO2 build-up and global warming. It is not automobile smoke alone that is responsible, of course. Rising population, electricity generation for industry, lighting, heating and cooling, all contribute. But what keeps everything together is the IC engine. And the EV, which would create less CO2, is seen as the icon of a new, sustainable order.

The questions that have been raised are two-fold. The first question is this: how much, finally, would CO2 emissions reduce if we shifted to the EV? With ‘greener’ (in fact, they are just ‘less brown’) electricity generation in many countries, the CO2 economy of running an EV becomes positive in those countries. Exceptions are where the bulk of electricity comes from coal, and India is a leader. But even in the other countries, electricity is generated partly using coal, and the rest using oil or natural gas, with only a part from sources like hydro or wind energy. Even solar energy has a large brown component, the fact that coal is burned in manufacture of solar panels – it takes the panels 15 years of generating non-polluting solar power to work off the cost of production. The world-wide effort to promote solar power may hence create so much CO2 that it may be too late before the benefits are visible.

However, granting that EVs have their merits, the second question that arises is whether the main problem that the world faces is one of carbon-free transport or one that is created by other economic activity. The changeover in transport to the EV could create in people a sense of ‘something being done’ and divert attention from the other domains. And worse, even in the matter of transport, it could create new interests, the EV industry, and draw attention away from initiatives like promoting public transport. The EV is being promoted as ‘carbon free’. This would attract users and investment and may lead to an increase of vehicles on the road and increase individual car use. Even in regions where the EV is clearly better than the IC engine, the EV still has its carbon stamp. Increase in the number of cars on the road could hence negate the gains of the EV. And promotion of the EV as ‘green’ motive power could push up other activity which, thankfully, does not exist today.

Pertinent, in the context, is the post by The World Economic Forum, an international non-governmental organization based in Geneva, promoting a so called ‘airport for flying cars’, coming up in Nov 2021 near Coventry, UK. The report says this is the first of many more of its kind, to cater to the air taxi market, said to value USD 500 billion in the US alone. And the facility is said to be ‘all electric and zero emission’.

Quite apart from the truth of the claim of ‘zero emission’, even in respect of the fuel used by the air taxis, we can see here the manufacture of the taxis, the batteries, construction of new airports and then roads and local transport for the air taxi passengers. Apart from further activity to sustain the USD 500 billion market. Does this not look like an instance of technology that could be a solution in one field of activity branching out to create another universe, which is clearly far from sustainable?

The context of Parkinson’s law was bureaucracy, the staffing of the Colonial Office in England, which grew as fast as England’s colonies were shrinking. The message was the human tendency to increase assets and authority regardless of purpose, in fact, in response to the lack of purpose. But does this law have application in the current context of human activity seeking to consume ‘to the hilt’ all new resources of energy?

It can be said that the problem in the 19th century was the rising consumption, in step with rising production made possible by steam power, rather than the limitations and the problems of the horse as a means of transport. And then, increase in coal mining, oil extraction and energy consumption through the 20th century. Would the world have been different if the effects that these developments had on the environment been realised? And should we now take heed of similar effects, when we embark on expansion, in the name of ‘green electricity’?

One may demand to know who are we to pose this question, when we are the ones responsible for crisis that the world is in. But we need to see that where we stand today is different from where we were a century ago. Global warming became apparent by the mid-1900s and today it is well documented. We are aware that it is important to hold the warming to 1.5°C, and the method is to contain emissions. In the context of bureaucracy, when modern methods increase efficiency, organisations get around Parkinson’s law by constant vigil, even moving to less working days in a week. And when technology discovers ways to deliver energy with less emissions, it is for us, in the same way, to see that we do not convert the gains into greater consumption.

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